Personally I’m not a fan of Christmas, just the word itself makes me want to slip into a wintersleep only to be waken up deep into the summer, but the Christmas time in 2013 was a different time and story. Back than everything was still alright, no Grinch had taken possession of my thoughts just yet and of course there was music to soothe my uncomfortable unholy thoughts. I mean, 2013 was the time that Quimper dropped two Christmas tunes, haunting and beautiful at the same time, creating that eerie vibe that would make my head in a acceptable way ready for the gift of giving, for munching on the body of Christ, for singing carols in the street, to stare at candle lights for hours , throwing happily some Christmas sparkles in the air while kissing any random stranger under a mistletoe.

There is just something about Quimper doing Christmas 2013 style that soothes the mind of the nowadays disturbed , eases it like a relaxing drug that can even make the biggest Scrooge into a sweet little Timmy. Of course Quimper got the vocal style of an angel that has the power to tell the virgin marry that she is pregnant without the dirty deed & making it all sound normally and accepted. With Quimper singing in your head the most freaked out news would sound like a comfortable thought, a little something to not really worry about, a little icing on the cake…

Also the 2013 Quimper release is not very long, making it the precious size that is tolerable to even the biggest haters of the so-called festive season. It’s like plasters on your ears, a careful kiss on your forehead telling that it’s all good… 2013 was all good… now it might not be this specific year, but thanks to the internet we could just pretend it is, simple done with the act of rasing our memories, traveling back in time and suck on our thumb like a baby, while still lovingly playing Quimper’s two 2013 Christmas tracks. The past always seems so much nicer than the future & grass always looks greener at the other side, but thanks to Quimper we don’t need to have these thoughts of jealousy, of old farts wishing to go back in history to kill baby Hitler; we just settle back to the year of 2013 and hang there for a while, snorting it all up for a descent set of mind and a more grateful heart.https://quimper.bandcamp.com/album/christmas-2013
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To be fair, I have had sleepless nights and ate not very well. That’s non of your concern but it does make me into a character that could use a little power up! That’s why I wanted to hear this Dry Eyes (I believe this artist must have dry eyes just because of all the sweet and tears it’s been donating into the producing process) because this little release seemed to be quite the recharging production – power wise!

So I sat and listened to ‘accumulation’ putting both ears into its power socket and hoped for the best. I could easily feel the electricity flowing in, soft and kind at first, small dosages coming one by one as if someone was banging a gong that had been wired to a power socket. After around four minutes of sound bathing in this boing-like gong state I wasn’t really sure if that power would really hit the veins to load me up as the empty human battery that I thought I was. But than I could feel it, tickling, a irritable sensation, something hissy, something that twinkled and vibrated; that must be the underlying core of promised power sneaking into the system.

I must say that I wasn’t expecting to be so relaxedly comforted, to be almost massaged by a sound bath of a digital kind and that it would set the scenery for a sneaky insertion of voltages, but somehow it did seem to work pretty well. Chilling out while slowly having your ears exposed to the sound that closely resembled the noise of a tattoo needle used in a ambient parlor.

The distribution process seemed to continue – although differently- this vibe. I still felt like a sound guru had taken me under its wing for a meditative session rather than a powerful beating of the buttocks. In fact, the sound bath became even music, with a sweet bell-like synth sound forming a melody to hang around in and something that sounded like a regular hit on a triangle for holistic rhythmic reasons. I don’t know if this was the enormous power up that I had in mind when seeing the album cover and reading the title, yet it made me meditate and realize that real power can’t be instantly inserted; it’s already in there – in you – me – somewhere.. you just need a break, a moment of relaxation, a massaging comfort, a session of music like this to find back your senses, get some rest and feel the power crawling back through your toes all the way up to the head. I have to think of that green character in the Star Wars series throwing up some wise words of wisdom, but instead of going down that road I’ll toss you here the link for your further self help improvements:https://dryeyes.bandcamp.com/album/power
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This album comes across as something I would imagine as a result of a manic ritual, with something that goes under neath the surface of the skin, slightly bouncing around with a certain dark holiness to it. The trend seems to set for a surreal gothic glow of electronic music that seems to fit the sightings of neon horned demons, the flapping wings of enthusiastic clapping bats & inescapable clubs in which people dance their guts out in trancelike possession. You can sniff culture down the corners, but it is painted in so much mystery that it becomes a world that seeks to be far removed from human daylight activities.

With strange synth sounds, intense atmospheric rhythmic atmospheres and a flair that seems to come from mystery and suitable magic, the music easily feast upon its listeners as if we are virgins thrown for the hungry anonymous masked crowd of hungry vampires. Everything is down the shady sides, playing with lights and shadows, creating a unknown space to move and wiggle around in, it’s like a eyes wide shut scene that feels a bit scary yet is too damn interesting not to attend and move your hypnotized body parts in.

When the album is finished it feels as if we finally could put our masks off, are free to scratch our heads and wonder what the hell happened, where we had been and how music could be so powerful to export us to a location that seems to be secretive, behind closed doors and far removed from our daily bright sides. It’s almost as if we managed to explore some kind of cult activity, something that would normally be hidden for our faint hearted techno fanatics, but are now strangely enough drawn into it – no questions asked – just like moths attracted to a fire. Pretty good, eh?http://deenabdelwahed.bandcamp.com/album/khonnar
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Caffeinate started this thing named yeah i know it sucks roulette to go through a whole box of audio chocolates all at once. Normally I’m not a idea stealer, but this one is so dandy that I wanted to have a slice of the cake by testing out if I could play a game of roulette myself.. guess what? I completely sucked at this game! It’s so hard for me to come up with a couple of words to describe a entire album or a enormous listening session; much more work than writing a book about a single or a entire documentary for a little EP. Anyway, here is what came out of my hands, a fine collection of music bits and bops that had either filled up the mailbox or somehow came to my attention through dubious ways… hope caffeinate will not sue me, but than again you can’t get anything from a pocketless featherless chicken, right?

Let’s take a dive and pick something out of the overloaded head that had been loaded with mysterious music recommendations:

Ah, this might be considered as a single even though it might not be findable on a playlist of any self loving commercial radio. Let me try to describe it for you cause that’s the thing that we seem to do over here…It’s as if someone had used just a few minutes of our time to catch a couple of flies, flattened their bodies on the wall, than had some issues with the sight that it created and used some illicit ways to clean it all up. Unlike the actions of any reasonable person armed with a sponge and some soap, this special character seems to have taken the leftover time to scrap off the bloody flies from the wall by tearing down the wallpapers, before eventually bashing the entire house down to the ground. DEEAT PALACE will perform the 15th of December at Gifgrond and I truly hope that there won’t be any flies as otherwise the change of a destroyed venue might be pretty, pretty, pretty high.https://deeatpalace.bandcamp.com/releases?fbclid=IwAR2WL6yUBvRrKPxibswIPnk1gbXyo5Mqr2CSOkZ6BoDelpbVTro50viHuSE

Next up I pulled one music review submission out of the fully flooded mailbox. It’s impossible to keep up with all the crap that is being send our way on a daily basis, but sometimes something nice and interesting slips through. This one is one of those lovely golden nuggets among them:

I remember B R O A D S , had listened and reviewed some of this Norfolk (UK) project before & even have a vague memory that it had been once recommended by one of our favorite music lovers Graham Boosey. In any case, this album had immediate high expectations to my personal fulfillment department and damn it nicely delivered. This album sounded very relaxed and pretty, modern and kind; music that would be perfect to bring children to bed while at the same time giving the adults responsible something really nice to listen. It was somehow a odd experience as the music felt very Icelandic to me, normally I wouldn’t drop names of things that I felt would fit together with, but I’m being naughty and say things like that Icelandic band called mum, or müm or múm or mùm … I have no idea which mum it is, but it’s a mum from Iceland; the Babylonian google will gladly assist you in further information. But also this obscure act named Bjork, Björk, Bjôrk, Bjørk, Bjōrk (choose the one that you dig) felt highly appropriate to be mingled among these tracks from B R O A D S. Especially the track named ‘Corners’ had a very ‘army of me’ kind of touch and feel about it. If you don’t know what I mean by army of me, than it’s time to check it out as that’s a pretty cool song by this obscure Icelandic artist. But B R O A D S is different as it doesn’t do singing, is more something that goes for instrumental bits and bites that strays away from any form of vocal distraction, resulting in a very pretty sounding album to chill away with. I wonder if they have snow in Norfolk, but if not, at least they got some good music to get you through the winter:https://broadsofnorfolk.bandcamp.com/album/a-small-box-over-a-global-goal-lp

From something like this, we move to something like that. And with that I mean the music of a certain Brian Bordello. You might know him from his family band the Bordellos, but now he has maneuvered himself out of the close group to focus on something that is completely him. You know, the English comedy group Monty Python had inspired a entire movie on the subject of Brian Bordello, but he had never focused on himself before. Now he finally did the trick and produced something called the ‘dead of Brian’ which felt like a reborn version of the writing and music skills of this very talented individual his mother and father (probably) named Brian. I don’t know if he got his musical skills from his parents, but his poetic and soulful songwriting and his whispery toothless kind of singing style seems to be very unique and personal, so much so that I doubt there is any other Brian Bordello (or a successful imposter) somewhere out there in the world. On his solo debut he crawls under the skin, goes into a deeply private space to deliver songs that will touch your genitals in a consensual way.https://metalpostcard.bandcamp.com/album/brian-bordello-the-death-of-brian

I don’t know about you, but personally I’m a bit like the Grinch. I’m not really into Christmas and kind of dislike it, hate is a big word but it’s the one that comes to mind when I have to describe this festive part of the year. What always happens in December is the fair amount of Christmas themed compilations that pop out like a can of worms in mating season. This ‘Midnight Night’ compilation is certainly one of them & because of it not being fully released yet I could only hear some of the preview songs on this collection. I listened to Sugar Relics and their Winter Time and thought it was something that leather clothed goths would make, while still dumping their feet in commercially accepted music. Yes, it isn’t your average sing a long around the Christmas tree song, but didn’t change my mind of Christmas being a earthly substitute of Hell. I also listened to a track by Mauerbrechter which felt like listening to a recording of some kind of goat herder on the top of a hill, playing some kind of flute to keep its goats happily together. I dont know if that’s your cup of tea, but if it is: you will probably dig that stuff. The last track I heard was Xtort and that was a bit weird, creeping out with vocoders and dark synths some kind of darkened landscape that felt futuristic and yet old school. It didn’t really seem to be the music for under the Christmas tree, unless you had wished for a Robotic new order who would do their best to exterminate the human race as we know it.https://venusaeon.bandcamp.com/album/midwinter-night

Of course these are just a few thingies that had come our way & I should have used the opportunity to have discussed much more.. but because I can’t sit on this post forever and the Christmas compilation seemed to have drained me + the fact that (believe it or not!) I’ve got a rucksack full of other stuff to do, I just end this roulette period in all abruptness, but promise that soon there will be more unpopular writings, opinions and links to something that might or might not be called ‘music’. Got to go!

I waited and waited in order for Mark to come back and ask him some questions about the second volume of the Question Mark compilation on the legendary Dog Park Records, but Mark didn’t seem to be either available, or was perhaps non existent all together. In any case, I thought to forget Mark and do the listening and the act of throwing opinions and remarks here and there all by myself… so here is my attempt, hope it serves you all well:

James Worse – an ost for portensuch

The first track on this compilation is very ticklish, it’s as if the fingers of the creator had been tapping the buttons in speedy, yet light weighted ways, creating a somewhat feathery experience with a maximized minimalism in a groovy rhythmic kind of way. Do I dig it? Well of course! If this was the music that sold instead of Tupperware at a Tupperware party, i would have wished to have a proper job just to be able to buy it all!

OSINIHCAM Orchestra – Boxing with the Robot Mixdown 2 fat baris

What can I write about this fat piece of music? It’s jazzy and comes across as some kind of midnight material with sexy sounds that must come out of a juicy saxophone, there is also a sensual sounding drummer doing swinging bits, playful keys that seems to be played with a loungable touch and also this radical synth bass that pops up its head at certain specific perfect times. I don’t know why exactly but the appearance of this synth made me think of a mole with a waxy haircut. It is fairly chilled out, yet it can’t stay under the ground forever and needs to stick its little head above ground for surreal effects. Somehow the entire track also made me think of juice, apple or orange juice to be precise. Did I enjoy it? Im not normally really a juice drinker, but thanks to this encounter of music I might turn myself into one!

Pompom – Emu

This made me feel like being on the train but in this cartoon time where the flinstones had been hanging around. A train in which people sit in carved out stones and have to use their own legs to make their ‘wagons’ move down over their Stone Age railroad system. Together the feet move and the more it flows the merrier it seems to sound! Eventually the whole lot goes down the hill with a spectacular speed, creating psychedelic alleyways for the Neanderthaloid’s mind along the way. Do I like it? It’s heroic and big like a mental elephant that’s almost too big for the room! Of course I love this! It’s truly enhanced hypnosis in music form!

ljn day – lacquercast

This one is one of my favorites on the album, as it really digs into that crispest vibe of a tiny mouse that is stuck behind some audio equipment. It is clearly nibbling away on the cables, the wires and probably enjoys licking the electric sockets as well; it always melts my heart when something like that happens.. the ‘dinner’ music for this tiny mouse is also not unpleasant, it’s fairly relaxed and forms a soothing backdrop that makes the high frequencies generated by the mouse into a tolerable experience. Do I like it? Obviously I do as I already mentioned it is one of my favorites on this compilation, it would be weird not to like it..

YANN PILLAS – Le point soporifique

At first I envisioned some country hill with blue grass and some lonely & lost looking tourist walking around on it. Than the sky became black with terrible consequences. I hoped that the tourist would carry a umbrella to protect itself from the darkness, yet felt also terrified that sticking up a umbrella in the air might invite a godly strike of thunder. Who likes a burned tourist? I certainly don’t. Than I realized that this weird vision was just generated by the music and that I just experienced the power of experimental music. Did I like it? Realizing this power I felt pretty much impressed by it all.

Adam Simmons vs Brian O’Dwyer – No time like the pheasant

With this track I did not envision any visions or strange encounters, I did however went into a abstract jazz zone in which fancy looking octopuses had been occupying the instruments. The free jazz that they played with their shiny tentacles sounded rather busy and manic, as if they had sunken into a magical cocktail of speed and liquid absinthe, creating some kind of crazy mix that must be coming across as insane to any sober person that just randomly walked into this scenery. Later on the track seem to abolish the Jazz and go more for a fruitcake that has a heart failure while trying to play the accordion; resulting in a noisy spasm that swiftly ends all the craziness. Do I like it? Who cares if I like it or not? Interesting question though… nuts that I am, I’ll probably do like it. There is just something fancy about those tentacled creatures doing jazz…

Carly Fern – School of Mudd

How many whisky bars have you ever visited in your lifetime? That’s just a random question for you that popped up while listening to this song. It has that whisky bar kind of vibe, one in which a folkish music rules the inner core of the venue like a mermaid doing its singing on the rocks. It’s getting everyone into the venue, directly to the bar to load themselves up with alcoholic beverages that are stronger than your normal cup of pub tea. I don’t wanna die’ the raw siren sings as we down enough liquid to tranquilize a dinosaur full of problems. Do I like it? Considering the alcoholic tensions that it gives me I have to sing out in full order: yes YES Yes and yes!

Life Groove Orchestra – 190917

The music here felt very slimy, as if someone had splashed a whole bucket of soap on the floor, making the act of walking over it without falling and slipping a true act of wonder. To be fair, the slimed sliminess does sound substantially alive, making it a bit into a excursion of exploring something that is more scientific than just listening to a clean floor with soap on it. This slime must be some kind of organism, it rattles like a rattle snake and sometimes it even sings; it’s probably Darwin’s cup of tea!

Brian O’Dwyer – Simply Put

This track took me down through wooden alleyways, lighted up by dimmed lights and smiley clouds coming out of old school cigarettes. The drums roll and the sounds of music generate a drooling sensation of nostalgia. It’s just a hint, a fragmented hint of a sensation as it passes by super quickly, yet it does this at its friendliest moody pace ever.

This sounded like a mixture of some surreal monk self hitting himself with some kind of bicycle chain in order to come closer to a holy height. You can smell the adrenaline, the machine like motor oil dripping from the person’s body. He mumbles gibberish words (something we do here all the time) while the chains fall down his backbone in a machine-like order. It seems in all it’s oddly ways that the person enduring it all is having a good time, impersonating friendly dwarfs and a gnarly sheep. Do I like this? I can only answer with multiple question marks to be fair: ???????

Post Gender – Stories for Young Children

This one made me think of slurping things, of listening to crazy little possessed puppy dogs that enjoy their lemonades with spices. You can hear them slurping it up with their fiercely raw sounding tongues, making it go down their hairy throats as a welcomed thirsty treat that needs to be downed immediately. This slurping sensation does get comfortably accompanied by a light atmospheric ambience, making me think of a room lid with candlelights to make the noises more elegant than they might have sounded in a different backdrop scenario. Do I like it? I’m a huge dog lover; of course I do!

David Prescott-Steed – What What

To finalize this ordeal of a perfect questionable compilation, this piece of music was a perfect decision. There is lots of action going on over here, think of frogs that jump on high hats , Christmas bells, and silly melody generators. They sing ‘bing boing’ while they do their things and when the main frog starts to howl all over it like a actual human being in the midst of a favorable orgasm; the entire piece of music becomes elevated in all the right crazy ways. It really leaves a favorable good taste in my mouth! A taste for more question mark compilations!!

Personally I see the electronic breakcore experimental music by Robotic Joe as the work of a true outsider artist that had chosen electronics over the acoustic things. Or perhaps the electronics had chosen him and not the other way around… whatever it is, or how to call it, it’s probably me trying to catch words in order to let you know that Robotic Joe as persona and his music creations are as unique as they could be. Not everyone will ‘get it’ and even the ones who think to ‘get it’ will probably just hang around guessing while stroking their chins in attempt to look like intelligent beings.

This tape by Robotic Joe is one of those things that only can be popping up out of interesting underground circuits. Story goes that they are out there, people have bought them, but they have also been shimmering around in a box for a lucky finder.. gosh who knows where all these tapes from the original release have ended up or where they are going to go as we speak. But thanks to the digital world we can hear the content of this tape through the internet ways, of course it’s not the same as listening in through a cranky old tape recorder but still it gets the job done… and than… (if you haven’t been familiar to Robotic Joe’s work) you will probably hear the eccentricity in his work that makes him the uncrowned king of electronic breakcore oursider music..

In fact, it’s so unique and different that you might want to drop the whole breakcore label & just say it’s a undefined genre, the Robotic Joe genre – only inhabited by Robotic Joe and all his outputs. Something only he could fabricate, only he owns the trademarks of the trade over and only Robotic Joe can execute without failure in all the right ways. Do I like what Robotic Joe does within this tape? Well yes, of course! I think it’s fascinating! It’s the kind of music that makes me scratch my skull to make question marks appear in the places that I scratched my hairs out. It’s the music that makes me stroke my chin while I practice my intellectual face in the mirror, it’s the music that is made in such a way that it feels from a music makers angle very hard to pinpoint, to understand or trace the inner workings for; but that’s the beauty!

That’s the magnificent thing of Robotic Joe’ s work; it’s unexplainable, undefinable, completely one of a kind and as different than different can be! To me things like this needs to be on the list of protected cultural things, belonging in the museum of modern art, a zoo for the exotic, as it if unique material that would make you feel gobsmacked if it had disappeared from the earth without our grandchildren having the chance to hear about it. Preserve it, tune in, appreciate this bird of paradise his music and spread the word:https://spmusic5.bandcamp.com/album/loopz-n-stuffz
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Petunia Liebling MacPumpkin has delivered her last music video for this year and if that isn’t the news that gets your heart to beat, than perhaps the futuristic pacemaker featured within it, might do the job for you! It’s exciting to see this heart suspended in machine as it ticks, tocks & boings in a steady huffy puffy way. Petunia Liebling MacPumpkin gives it to you straight, no secrecy but It’s been clearly monitored by machinery that you can trust; shiny robots with rattling mechanics in their system and a great ability to steal the show in a music way.

Petunia Liebling MacPumpkin joins one specific robot as a fitting singing duo, one that feels the robotic stiff tightness in singing, that petunia so lovingly compensates by showcasing a more theatrical vocal performance. She swings her voice like a entertainer from different times, one that keeps the human soul alive while her surroundings are ruled by robotics. They are good at love making , time keeping, being shiny and as modern companionship. But as this video proofs; also very good as the providers of music, dancing and pure entertainment. If that makes your heart not want to beat in exciting or normal fashion, you must also immediately get one of these fancy machines to keep it pumping! Cause this is a very exciting work to see and hear & if you flatline on it there is simply something very wrong with you! Petunia Liebling MacPumpkin has done it again & thanks to her and the special friends, we can tick tock the time away in most colorful ways!
Get the music over at the following link:https://electricphantom.bandcamp.com
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